4 posts tagged “filipino”

So I'm flippin' through all my social networks (I'm busy at work. So I'm procrastinating. It is the story of my life) and I'm all - hey, let me see if I can find any cousins/old friends/family in the Philippines on this thing!

I do a quick search on the family name and I get a list of names that nearly made me pee my pants. 

1. Lust.  No, for fucking real. Some parent named their kid LUST. Remember, the Philippines is primarily Roman Catholic.  To name your kid that one out of the 7 Deadly Sins is pretty fucking hilarious. I guess it's better than Gluttony.  I would've lobbied for Vanity myself.
2. Aids.  Yeah. I don't know.
3. Lard.  Maybe it's a nickname.  I don't care, I'd knock someone's teeth out if they called me Lard.
4. Maria Clara Emmanuel Joy Olive.  That is her entire name.  I haven't even added the mother's maiden name and last name.  Why would you punish your kid like that?  Imagine, she's in first grade, the teacher gives a pop quiz.  Teacher asks kids to write their name.  The quiz is over and poor Maria Clara Emmanuel Joy Olive hasn't even finished writing her first name.
5. BabyMae.. Sweet motherfucking lord.  I know, I know, Baby is totally a normal name/nickname in the Phils, but it still cracks my shit up. I also love the lack of space, yet the extra capitalization.
6. Utot. This has got to be a joke or funny nickname though.  Because if your parents named you "Fart," it is because they HATE YOU.
7. Yrene. I'm assuming that's pronounced I-rene. 

Oh my people, you crack my shit up.

ETA: I should have known there was some kind of explanation for the weirdness.

I grew up in the Philippines in a very rural area, where superstitions and native beliefs are still very strong and part of day to day life. 

A belief that we have is that after death, the newly deceased has 40 days to roam the earth to say their goodbyes.  During those days, the family of the deceased tend to have visitations - either physical manifestations, or dream visits.

When an uncle passed away in the mid-80's (85 or 86), I was about 9 or 10 years old.  He was an overseas worker - working in an oil field in Saudi Arabia.  He passed away in his sleep of a heart attack or some such (he had sleep apnea). 

Anyway, I remember one morning, my grandmother was really uneasy.  She'd dreamed that Uncle V had come home, and was calling for her.  He was outside, right under her window, telling my grandmother that he was coming home soon.  He was dressed very formally in a dark suit (very strange, as he didn't own a suit.  He worked as a mechanic type at an oil field, and always wrote home about how he kept ruining all his shirts and pants from working on the machinery), and had luggage around him.  She also noticed this large, red, canvas suitcase that she did not recognize.  He looked very pale, but he was smiling as he said he'll be coming home soon and they had better throw a big party.  Yet while my grandmother was listening/dreaming this, she just felt very, very uneasy.

For the next few days, we would experience strange things: Uncle V's framed graduation photograph kept falling off its place on the family shelf of photos, and landing face down on the hardwood floor, yet the glass never cracked.  It didn't matter if we left it lying on it's back or pushing it closer to the wall.  It would fall, without bothering the numerous other picture frames of his brothers and sisters or my grandparents.  We would place it partly behind several other frames, leave the room, and we'd hear a crash on the floor, and there's the photo on the floor, face down.  The other picture frames were undisturbed.

We would smell candles and flowers.  Not just a wiff of candles, but we'd enter a room and it would smell like a church - like hundreds of candles had been burning.  Those rooms would also be noticeably colder, downright chilly.  Which tells you something, as it was the middle of the dry season in the Philippines.

Uncle V's wife and kids kept saying that they kept hearing his voice in their dreams, that he kept saying he was coming home.  Also the cold and smell of candles and flowers was focused in the master bedroom.  It got to the point my aunt-in-law was so freaked out she and the kids moved in with my grandparents. 

Sure enough, a few days later, representatives from the company that employed my uncle came to the house to say that my uncle had passed away a week or so before in his sleep.  His body would be shipped home in a refrigerated casket, along with his belongings.  They offered their condolences, and handed over a packet of information on how to claim the body etc.  I remember hearing my grandmother screaming.

When three other uncles and my aunt went to Manila to pick up the body and his personal items, they inspected the body, and sure enough, he was wearing a fancy black suit.  There was also large red canvas suitcase, so new it still had the price tags, among his belongings. 

But that was just the start of the utter weirdness.  There were two instances that I personally experienced, and it scared the utter shit out of me.

..TO BE CONTINUED. If I feel like it.  And only after I finish one of the big bosses on Okami. (Read Part 2!)

What's your middle name?  Is there a story or history behind it?

That's a little complicated.  In true Filipino fashion, my (and my sister's and brother's) middle name is actually our mom's maiden name.  I don't write it out, though: I just use the initial.  But my first name is a hyphenated name - so most people assume that the second part of my first name is my middle name.  Oh my god, was that confusing?

So my initials are L-ATB.  Or LATB.  But sometimes, I leave out the T.  Which pisses my mom off to no end.

I was reading a journal entry and the word "Oriental" was used to describe someone, I assume, who was of East Asian descent.

...Oriental.  What?

Didn't that go out of style sometime in the 19th century?  It startled me that I took such umbrage over "oriental," that I had to sit for a bit and think WHY it upset me so much, other than a knee-jerk reaction since I'm Filipino-American. 

That term struck me as incredibly disparaging, and more than a little patronizing: it's a term I associate with Europeans and American imperialists setting off for Asia, calling the South, East and Southeast Asians their "little brown brothers" and "foreign Oriental peoples."  I have no problems with using "oriental" when in reference to objects, but I have such a visceral reaction to a person being called "Oriental."  It just smacks of ignorance: it's the 21st century, with information coming from television, newspapers and the internet.  Knowledge is freely available; The least a person can do is be a little more aware.